A/N: Long story short, I stumbled upon the transcendence au a few days ago and immediately wanted to write fic. Mostly because Dipper vs himself is the most tragic thing I have ever witnessed.
Warnings for death, murder, blood, a bit of gore, etc. Basically, the norm for this au, right?
(May 2018): I wrote this fic a couple years back, and while I put in on Tumblr I'd yet to post it here so... enjoy?
The worst part is, they aren't wrong—Dipper Pines is dead, if only in a metaphorical way, because the person he used to be would have shuddered at the idea of death, would be horrified by his actions, would never even have dreamed of committing them at all.
Alcor rips his clawed, inhuman hand from the chest of a worshiper, the blood dripping from his fingers, uncomfortably warm and wet in the chilly air of the basement. He watches the man drop to the floor and bleed out with a scornful expression, grimacing when the summoner's hands fumble for his feet, bloody lips mouthing pleas for mercy.
Alcor flicks his bloodied hand absently, half-heartedly noticing the flinch and scream of another member of the cult when the warm blood splatters across the floor. He wonders if he should be disturbed, and decides he doesn't care.
There is the discarded body of a child at his feet, and the sight of her sets his blood boiling. He doesn't care what happens to these people, to these fools that murder for vengeance and believe themselves exempt from justice just because they can summon demons to their side. They don't deserve any glimpse of what little humanity Alcor has salvaged from his long years of life.
They don't deserve anything.
A sharp cry of rage rises behind him and he turns, mouth drawn in a snarl and eyes burning. The woman who'd dared to attack drops her dagger with a scream, the weapon burning her, and continues to scream as the fire crawls up her arm and consumes her flesh instead.
The people scatter for the exits but he slams the single door shut, leaving them trapped. The younger ones he drives mad, locked away in their darkest nightmare. The elders fall to the floor like broken puppets, their skin flayed and necks snapped without remorse.
The worst part is that Dipper Pines didn't die, not really—he simply became the monster he never wanted to be, and if Alcor is honest with himself (and he never truly is) he thinks that death would have been the better deal.
At first, it was Mabel who held him together.
He thinks he would have lost himself years sooner if not for her. His twin has always been the more emotional of them, the more grounded one. His mother used to joke that they were two halves of a whole, a head and a heart, one keeping them alive and the other keeping them sane.
(He never did so well at the "keeping alive" part; but then, even Mabel couldn't keep him sane, so maybe his mother was wrong all along.)
The first few years were some of the hardest in his eyes, but in a way, also the easiest—because he knew who Dipper Pines was and he knew who Bill Cipher was and back then it was easy to tell the difference between the human and demon and now—
Now, not so much.
Mabel helped. Mabel chattered and sang and never doubted in his existence, regardless of what the world told her. When Dipper found himself being summoned by those who would spill blood for their vengeance, she gave herself a new name and fought beside him so he wouldn't have to do it alone. She found herself a family and in turn, gave Dipper a new family as well—and never lost faith in him, even when his eyes glowed solid gold and his form was nothing more than a living shadow.
Mabel was the one who could see him for who he was, the demon and the boy and where they collided, and accepted it all with a smile and a laugh, as if the idea of being horrified by him was a concept she just couldn't take seriously.
"You're not a demon, Dipper. You're my brother," she'd said once, tapping the bloody bedazzled bat against the ground, the beaten and broken remains of the cult surrounding them. She nudged him with her elbow and smiled faintly. "And my brother is a good person."
"But I am a demon," Dipper protested, and Mabel had laughed, then, the way she did when she'd finally understood the answer to a joke no-one else had yet discovered.
"That's not what I meant, silly!"
Centuries later and he still doesn't entirely understand what she had meant back then, but then, he's starting to think it doesn't matter—because the words alone are enough to hold him together, for now, even though Mabel is no longer there to do it for him.
"Help me with my math homework," the dark-skinned girl demands, white teeth gleaming in the light of the candles. Her eyes shine with determination, and her victorious expression leaves no room for fear.
"Please?" she adds, an afterthought, a faintly sheepish look crossing her expressive face.
He stares, and hovers uncertainly over the circle. He wonders if it's a trick. He wonders how reckless she must be, to summon a demon to help her with math, of all things. He wonders what type of math it is—certainly he would be able to help her. Dipper has always been good at calculations.
"Do you have any ice cream?" he asks finally, and when she grins, has to keep himself from smiling back.
The cult lies in shambles around him, the two children used as his sacrifice lying at his feet. One lies still, eyes staring and blood trickling from her lips. The other breathes faintly, eyelids fluttering and half gone already.
Twin sacrifices for the Twin Star! the man had cried. His wish had been for Alcor to kill his greatest enemy. Alcor had killed him, instead.
(Everyone knows their greatest enemy is themselves, after all. Alcor is proof of that much.)
"̩̞̻̲̱ͅI'm̡̩̥̤͔̜̺̙ ̶s͜o̡̟̪̳͖̯̥r͖̠̜r͖y,̯̯̟"̯͉͖ ̡̦̝̥͚̳͇ he tells the dying boy, and his heart feels empty and hallow. He doesn't bother to ask for a deal. The boy is too far gone, and one soul—one soul is enough. Alcor doesn't think he could bear the weight of another.
The boy's eyelids flicker, his breath coming out in pained gasps. "You're—Alcor," he whispers, and that bleary gaze focuses on his face. "The… demon?"
"Ỳes̴,̧" ́Alcor says. The dark echo that usually laces his words is fading, withering away under that soft, unfocused stare, devoid of fear and containing only a childish sort of wonder. It's been a very long time since anyone has looked at him like that.
The boy smiles faintly, and Alcor feels a pang deep in his heart. They share no resemblance, but he can see himself in the boy, in the way his hand still curls over the fingers of his dead sister, in the last traces of wonder shining in his eyes.
"My sister," the boy murmurs drowsily, his gaze wavering, eyes slow to shut and slow to open. "I can't…hear her, is she—" he starts to cough, harsh and wet, blood dripping down the side of his mouth. Where his sister's throat had been slit, he had been stabbed, damned to a slow and painful death.
The boy struggles to inhale, each breath rattling deep in his chest, his words forced through clenched teeth. "P-please, is my sister… okay?"
Alcor pauses. The boy's breath is dying. His eyes are closing, trembling hands finally stilling. His emotions are a hurricane of colors, but the shine of hope, golden bright and gleaming, is the color glowing richest to his eyes.
"Yes," Alcor lies, voice cracking, and waits with the child until he passes.
"You're my son," Lionel says, and his eyes are steady and his heart is sure and Dipper almost feels like crying, because he never did anything that was worth this man's love.
"But I'm a demon," he says weakly, and remembers the people he called parents hundreds of years ago, remembers their cutting words and denial, remembers how even their love hadn't been enough.
"And you're my son," the man says firmly, and Belle throws her arms around his shoulders with a cheery, "And you're my twin, Dipdop! What's your deal?" and Dipper does cry, then, and the ache in his chest eases, just a bit, soothed by the certainty in their voices and the love in their hearts.
Mabel hugs him close one day, spontaneous and without warning, the action sudden enough to send him stumbling back to keep his balance. It is nearly a year after the Transcendence, a year after Dipper's life fell to pieces, a year after everything. She's wearing the sweater that plays music when you press the knitted boom box, her thick hair pinned back by clips shaped like stars, smelling strongly of hot cocoa and smoke after long hours of playing games with Dipper by the fire.
"Dipper," she starts, slow and careful in a way she rarely is, "are you going to be okay?"
He pauses and she hugs him tighter when he hesitates to touch her, fearful of causing her harm.
"Please tell me the truth."
He holds her back gingerly, hyperaware of the fine claws on his fingers and how easily they could hurt her, and stares out blankly over her shoulder. His physical form is one bought from a deal and offered candy, and it still retains traces of his demonic nature. If he's not paying attention he can spear his palm with his own claws, and sometimes he'll bite down on his lip and his mouth will fill with blood. He's not entirely sure of how to use his wings, and the sting of his parent's rejection still aches like an open wound.
Is he going to be okay?
"Maybe," he says, quiet and a bit uncertain. "If you're here, I guess."
He feels her smile against his shoulder, and her hands press a little bit harder into his back.
"Aw, Dip, I'll always be here," she informs him, and beneath her mischievous tone there is a note of seriousness. She pulls away from the hug, dark eyes wide and intent as they fix on his face. "After all, I'm the eldest! The alpha twin! So don't worry, okay? If anything ever goes wrong, I'll be there to set you straight." Her smile is blinding, stretched wide and true.
He swallows hard to keep himself from crying, and can't bring himself to smile back. "How can you know that?"
"Because we're twins, silly!" she says, and bops her fist against his head, light and fond. "No matter what happens, we'll face it together."
Every few centuries, after one death too many, after too many examples of just how cruel human nature can be, Dipper snaps.
He forgets his humanity, forgets what it means to be human, and his actions are merciless and unforgivable. Any fool who summons him finds themselves either dead or wishing they were, and he twists every deal in his favor, be it the request of a child or a cult. Mizar becomes a name that holds little meaning other than a brief niggling familiarity, and then dismissed, just as easily.
He knows that logically, it makes sense that his mind wouldn't be able to handle all his years of life, knows that the fact he always ends up returning back to himself is proof of his humanity, but knowledge doesn't bring back the dead, and doesn't stop the world from whispering about his terrible deeds.
Sometimes, after he's come back to himself, he curls up and screams until his throat is raw, screams until it's all he can hear, the shrill, despairing sound buzzing in his ears and making him dizzy.
He screams until all of his anger is spent, all of his emotion and rage and whatever else he feels has passed. Then he weeps, quiet and childlike, his face pressed against his knees and his arms curled tight around himself.
It would be easier if he wasn't aware of it. If he couldn't feel his own humanity slipping away, if he couldn't see the similarities between whom he is now and the demon he killed years and years ago—
It would be easier. It wouldn't hurt so much to recognize the dark intent behind his actions, to see the toothy smile stretch across his lips. The fact he can still do this at all is perhaps a testament to his lingering humanity, but it hurts and this isn't the human quality he wanted to preserve, anyway.
Death would be a mercy compared to this, he thinks, so maybe it makes a strange sort of sense why he keeps murdering all the fools who summon him with another's blood. Better to die by a demon's hand than become one yourself.
Mabel held him together until the world stole her away, and then every Mizar who came after her tried and tried, but even their voices couldn't chase away the shadows that whispered in his head forever. But oh, how they had tried.
(He thinks the fact they tried at all is a blessing he never really deserved.)
There were others, too—a thousand names and a thousand faces like dancing candles in the dull monotony of his existence. They bring with them laughter and love and second chances, but they are all human, and in the end like candles they all go out, leaving him nothing but wispy, fading memories to hold onto.
Their voices try to hold him together but Dipper is like sand falling through their grasping fingers, and he falls and falls until the boy is ripped away and then there is only Alcor, angry and bitter and why me why me I never asked for this, inhumane and murderous and a demon to the core.
"Go away," Bentley groans, head thumping his desk. His dyed hair flops around his face at the repetitive movement, his eyes shut as if it physically pains him to see Dipper's face. "Go away, I need to study, this isn't helping, go away."
"Awww," Dipper says, drawing out the sound long and slow, and biting back a laugh at Bentley's exasperated groan. "But I am being helpful! This is for the best, I swear."
"How is poking my shoulder and chattering in my ear helping me at all?" Bentley grumbles into the desk, and one hand comes up to push at Dipper's face. "I need to study, Dip. Now go away."
"You need to sleep," Dipper points out, and throws up both hands in surrender when Bentley looks up with a glare. "No, really! Two days without sleep is bad! Study can wait, c'mon."
"Says the demon who doesn't need to sleep."
"I don't need to eat, either, but I still do that—I know how these things work!" Dipper says, mildly affronted, and then adds, "Besides, Torako says you need to sleep so clearly, she, as a functioning human being, would know."
Torako sticks her head through the door as if on cue, her smile mischievous and fond. "Sleep," she calls to Bentley, "sleep is important. Studying is less important. Go to bed, nerd."
"I just need to finish this page!" Bentley protests, and Torako heaves a heavy sigh, her head drooping. A fond smile curls unbidden at the edge of her lips, and her eyes are laughing.
"Hey, Al, my untouched cup of hot chocolate if you get Ben to finally go to bed," she says lazily, and Bentley snaps his head around as if electrocuted, eyes wide open and looking blatantly betrayed.
"What? No! Dipper, don't you dare, it's just one more page—"
Dipper grins at Torako; she grins back. He likes Torako. She's the best partner in crime ever, especially when it comes to looking after Bentley.
"Deal," he declares, and Torako laughs loudly as Bentley splutters, and Dipper smiles wide and true and feels more like himself than he has in centuries.
At some point he stops caring. It's a slow thing, this all-consuming numbness, and it creeps up on him without warning. He stops looking for Mabel's soul, for Henry's and triplets, and eventually he stops looking for anyone at all, be they former friends or persistent children who need help with calculus.
His power is ever changing, ever growing, and at some point he realizes he doesn't need to answer summons anymore, and neither does he wish to. It's not like they're that common, these days. The answering machine is so long out of use he's forgotten what it sounds like.
It's not that the world forgets him; it's that it ignores him, ignores his very existence with a thinly veiled fear. He has grown too powerful, too tricky, too much. It isn't worth summoning him, anymore.
Alcor finds it doesn't bother him that much.
He waits and waits in total isolation as the world flies by, and he lets it. He stops watching, stops paying attention—stops feeling, and if what little was left of Dipper Pines wasn't dead yet, it sure is now.
The world moves on without him, burning and destroying and falling into ruin with every passing century. Alcor loses himself in faded memories and regret, only vaguely aware of the waking world, and ignoring the small voice whispering in the back of his mind, What if …?
He's tired, and the world, once full of mystery, has become dull to him. Nothing changes, and if it does, only for the worst. The world is spiraling towards destruction and he can barely find it in himself to care.
There is no mystery left in this world. There is nothing left for him at all.
(But in the back of his mind that small voice grows a little louder, a little more insistent. What if, it whispers, what if I could change it? What if I could make it better?)
Bill Cipher leers down and Dipper glares back and he can feel the demon's power rip through him, tearing him apart at the seams, taking everything he is and everything he could be and ripping them away from his grasp, the laughter high-pitched and unending, echoing in his ears and in his heart and in his soul.
Dipper sets his feet against the roaring tide of power, thinks, Mabel, this is for Mabel, and prepares himself for a fight he refuses to lose.
Mabel curls her hand around his and grins. It lights up her whole face, crinkles her eyes and seems to make their surroundings just a little brighter, just a bit warmer. Her face is that of a child's, the pre-teen little girl who taught pioneers to high-five and smashed a zombie with a karaoke set. She swings their arms lightly, practically bouncing on her feet in her joy.
Dipper squeezes her hand back, smiling through his tears. He can hardly see straight, so thoroughly they blind his vision, so he shuts his eyes, ducking his head and grinning off to the side. He's clothed in shorts and a vest, his trucker's hat crammed firmly atop his head, its slight weight heart-achingly familiar.
"Heya, Dipper," Mabel says, her voice quivering. She sniffs hard, wiping her eyes with one sweater-covered arm, her smile unfaltering. "You're real late, you know."
The universe shines around them, reworking itself into something new and bold, unexplored territory for the both of them, and all the other souls waiting for new life. It shines gold in his vision. He has no heart but his chest aches anyway, because Mabel is here and he is with her, finally, and nothing will ever separate them again.
"Sorry, Mabel," Dipper returns, his own answer just as soft and shaky, his hands trembling from the wave of emotion rising within him. "I know. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Mabel says, and she squeezes his hand tight with almost bruising force, as if daring the world to even try and tear them apart now. "You're here now. It's okay."
"I'm here now," Dipper repeats, and another wave of tears rolls down his face, catching on the edge of his smile. He's so happy he thinks he might burst. "Yeah. Yeah, I am," he says, hardly daring to believe in it, and it feels like—like an ending, maybe, but also a victory.
There's a whole new world out there, a whole new universe to deal with, but he isn't afraid. Whatever happens, whatever may come—Dipper knows he and Mabel will face it together.